Former President and the Congress veteran Pranab Mukherjee today visited the birth place of the RSS founding Sarsanghachalak Keshav Baliram Hedgewar ahead of his much-anticipated speech at the Sangh headquarters in Nagpur.


In the visitor's book at the Hedgewar's birthplace, Mukherjee wrote, "Today I came here to pay my respect and homage to a great son of Mother India."


Hedgewar, before he founded the RSS, was an active member of the Indian National Congress in the 1920s. He was deeply influenced by the writings of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and broke away from the Congress to form the RSS in 1925.


Mukherjee was welcomed by the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. According to sources, this visit to pay tributes to Hedgewar was not part of Mukherjee's scheduled itinerary and an impromptu decision was taken by the former president to do so.


At the headquarters, he will also garland the statue of the sangh founder Hedgewar. There, he will be introduced to the other senior Sangh functionaries and will attend the Sangh parade by its workers on completion of the training camp.


Mukherjee, who reached Nagpur last evening, has been invited by the RSS to address its Shiksha Varg. It is an annual training camp, meant for swayamsevaks in their third year in the organisation. The RSS holds training camps for first, second and third-year swayamsewaks. -- PTI